Candice Pert describes the human being as "more like a flickering flame than a hunk of meat".  I love this description as I find it freeing.  If I am too physical, too mired in the little miseries of being physical, I feel trapped and punished.  If I see myself as a flickering flame, I know I am free to change anything at anytime.  Like a flame, I am constantly changing, and so change is the norm, not the exception.  It is impossible not to change, and so the trick becomes to consciously choose how I will change and why.

If you are a candle, you have a form.  You can be tall and cylindrical, or short and wide, or round and smooth.  And you can melt, but you don't morph. 

But what shape is a flame?  We can say it is sorta wide at the base and tapering toward the top, but one breeze can make it the opposite - wide on top and narrow at the base.  One breeze can cause a flame to take many different shapes in the duration of one moment. 

To say that we are like a flickering flame is also to say that we contain a spark of the divine.  And so, we are not merely physical, but also go beyond the physical.  The flame that we are is what's behind the physical, illuminating it, shining through.